That wide muzzle with its Nigersaurus teeth was ideal for scooping up ferns, horsetails and also other low-lying plants. And Together with the bountiful teeth, the dinosaur would've experienced no trouble shearing by means of this vegetation.

Nigersaurus and its closest kinfolk are grouped throughout the subfamily Rebbachisaurinae (previously considered grouped within the eponymous Nigersaurinae) in the household Rebbachisauridae, that's Element of the sauropod superfamily Diplodocoidea. Nigersaurus was probably a browser, and fed with its head close to the ground. The region of its brain that detected scent was underdeveloped, Despite the fact that its Mind measurement was akin to that of other dinosaurs.

First discoveries of Nigersaurus fossils date back into the sixties, but it surely was not until finally the 1970s that extra entire remains had been uncovered. These continues to be ended up formally examined and explained by paleontologist Paul Sereno and his staff in 1999.

The remains of Nigersaurus had been at first described by Taquet in 1976 as belonging to a dicraeosaurid, but in 1999 Sereno and colleagues reclassified it being a rebbachisaurid diplodocoid.[4] These researchers speculated that since short necks and modest size was identified between basal diplodocoids, it could reveal these were ancestral options on the group.

We have been closing in on that aim rapid since we came on a skeleton a few days later! This skeleton is lying on its facet Using the tail curved upward. The curve of your backbone steps about 15 ft.

Reconstructed skeleton of Nigersaurus, showcasing the dinosaur's one of a kind 500-tooth jaw construction and elongated system.

The restricted knowledge of the genus was the results of lousy preservation of its remains, which arises from your sensitive and very pneumatic building (crammed with air Areas linked to air sacs) of your cranium and skeleton, consequently causing disarticulation in the fossils. Several of the cranium fossils ended up so slender that a powerful gentle beam was seen through them. As a result, no intact skulls or articulated skeletons are identified, and these specimens depict the most finish recognised rebbachisaurid continues to be.[three][1]

A completely new genus and species of toothless noasaurid ceratosaur has been discovered from an extremely full skeleton found in...

Even so, as described, Nigersaurus had a continuing supply of recent teeth since they have been replaced if the top tooth in the column wore out.

And what a skeleton it had been! The newfound fossils gave us our 1st think about the dino's sophisticated dental batteries and vacuum cleaner mouth. Sereno named the species Nigersaurus taqueti — 500 teeth dinosaur being an homage to French paleontologist Philippe Taquet — in 1999.

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Nearby lay Component of the backbone and the hip bones. This was a indicate shopper—the bones are from a skeleton that might evaluate about 30 ft extensive! We hope to locate far more proof of the sharp-toothed creature as the field period goes on.

The main fossils of Nigersaurus were identified from the Elrhaz Formation of Niger inside the yr 1997. Having said that, further examine uncovered that Nigersaurus was essentially a member of another group of sauropods referred to as the rebbachisaurids.

The authors as a result cautioned in opposition to making use of semicircular canals as proxy to infer the exact orientation of skulls. They observed that food plan correlated strongly with semicircular canal orientation, but not with head posture, whilst head posture and semicircular canal orientation had been strongly correlated with phylogeny.[25]